The Right Operating System for You

Vista Sightings

Windows Vista does deliver improvements in security (though you'll still need a third-party firewall unless you're up for some complex configuration tasks), plus several improved utilities and new features. It's the look, though, that makes Vista a desirable upgrade for most people. Vista's Aero environment displays windows, icons, and other desktop elements with more colors, shading, and shadowing, as well as--for the first time--transparency. Buttons glow like red or blue LEDs when you hover over them. Translucent window frames, menus, and title bars remind you of other applications buried a layer or two deep, and the Flip 3D task switcher is clearly inspired by Apple's Exposé, which displays cleverly arranged thumbnails of all your running applications.

Cribbing more directly from Apple, the gadget-populated Windows Sidebar is a variation on OS X's Dashboard widgets. However, the redesigned Media Player, Control Panel, mail, and photo previewing interfaces are evidence that many of Vista's changes are only skin deep. Drilling down through a new menu structure often reveals the very same dialog boxes that were present in Windows XP.

Gamers should eventually see great dividends by switching to Vista. DirectX 10 promises to accelerate games eightfold, and it won't be available under Windows XP. And Vista's Windows Presentation Foundation makes it easier for software developers to produce graphics-hardware-accelerated applications.

Vista's many innovations come at a cost, however. Recent PC World Test Center trials demonstrated that although Vista performs just fine on the Microsoft-recommended hardware, Windows XP runs the same applications significantly faster (see "Lab Tests: Vista's Fast If You Have the Hardware"). So unless you can tolerate a downgrade in performance, you may want to upgrade your PC right along with your operating system. Nevertheless, on a reasonably equipped machine, Windows Vista provides fast search results for files, documents, e-mail messages, and Web sites.